Conventionally, information is published in document form as a printed publication, or in electronic form but again using the document or book metaphor. In the past, the concept of a “multidimensional space” in electronic publishing has been intuitively understood (that is, instinctively desired). However, a comprehensive display, discussion or treatment has been rejected by publishers and information providers as too difficult to develop and manage. Instead, publishers and information providers have managed large amounts of data:
(1) by limiting the size or coverage of the information space; and
(2) by setting or predetermining the path through that information space.
The effect of this is clearest when the dimension of time is considered. The conventional approach to information storage and publishing is centred on the notion that information is either “current information” (ie, present day) or “historical information” (ie, the day before the present day and all days prior to that). Thus, information is traditionally retained (stored) and/or published (sold) as either current or historical information.
The effect of this has been to leave the end user with a collection of non-integrated repositories and many additional tasks to do before the information is useful to them. For example, the end user is required to:
(1) make most of their own connections between related pieces of information;
(2) do their own analysis of the type and subject of information they require or are seeking; and
(3) find information appropriate to the point in, or period of, time with which they are concerned.
To illustrate the disadvantages of conventional publishing systems, an example of using such conventional techniques and publishing systems to research information is provided. If a person were interested in information regarding the powers of the Secretary under Australian legislation with respect to couples in a family relationship, when and how the Secretary is restricted, and what did the relevant legislation provide prior to that, the person would refer to relevant legal information, which is the Social Security legislation of the Commonwealth of Australia. The relevant provisions are set forth in Appendix A under the heading “Example Research”. This would be determined by the end user's own knowledge of the broad subject and/or reference to secondary material.
The relevant legislative provision is Section 4, which in conventional electronic legal publishing systems might be found by looking for words or phrases such as “family”, “family relationships”, and “family relationships” AND “social security”, where AND is a logical operator.
Once the above is established, it can be seen from the information found that Section 4 of the Social Security Act, as at Sep. 8, 1996, has been amended ten times (see Appendix A: A1. AMENDMENTS TO SECTION AT Sep. 8, 1996).
There is however nothing in the current Commonwealth Government Reprint, in either the electronic or print versions (see heading EXAMPLE RESEARCH of Appendix A), that allows the end user to see the text of those amendments or what part(s) of Section 4 were changed by them.
Thus, unless the end user is prepared to refer to many statute books, reading each piece of text against another, the end user is not able to see easily or reliably what section 4 looked like before it was amended by any one of a number of prior amending Acts. However, if the end user has a library complete enough to provide access to the prior amending Acts, the person would eventually determine that Act No 105 of 1995 is the relevant amending Act.
Further, it should be noted that, while the Commonwealth Government Reprint indicates that the Social Security Act was amended by Act No 105 of 1995, it does not indicate what section or schedule in Act No 105 of 1995 actually amended Section 4. This again requires the end user to have access to the amending Acts themselves and renders the information provided by the Reprint as to commencement (see Appendix A: B. COMMENCEMENT INFORMATION FOR ACT NO 105 of 1995 CONTAINED IN REPRINT) of little utility without a copy of the amending Act No 105 of 1995 from which it can be established that Section 14 of Act No 105 amended Section 4 of the Social Security Act with respect to powers of the Commissioner (see Appendix A: D. AMENDING ACT 1995 NO 105 AMENDING SECTION 14).
Eventually, the required information can be found but several pieces of information need to be searched by the end user. This is an arduous, time consuming, tedious and complex task that must be manually repeated for each research topic and if the same search is to be carried out again.
Conventional publishing systems, including electronic publishing systems that typically are speeded-up, paper-based publishing systems, are based on a book-metaphor. The smallest piece of information used by such conventional publishing systems is either (I) an Act or Regulation (in the case of reprints, a whole Act or Regulation is printed again), or (II) a word. Typically, conventional publishing systems choose a word as the smallest piece when legislation is amended. To track such amendments, a lawyer or their assistant may actually use scissors to cut and paste pieces of legislation or the publisher cuts and pastes each word electronically. If a whole Act or Regulation is tracked as in (I) above, it is necessary to store each new version of an Act or Regulation in its entirety.
This has a number of consequences, including:
a) only a few versions of each Act or Regulation are stored;
b) the end user rarely searches more than one reprint at a time;
c) it is very difficult to know which particular section or schedule has changed, to track how that particular section or schedule has changed, to find the relevant section of the Amending Act or Regulation that effected the section or schedule as shown in the reprint;
d) if multiple changes have occurred on a particular section or schedule between reprints, the latest version of the section or schedule can only be seen in the reprint;
e) issues like commencement of the latest version of a particular section or schedule and so-called “Application, Saving or Transitional Provisions” are difficult to recreate; and
f) it is difficult to come to a full understanding of the legislation by means of the reprints.
If every single word is tracked, as in (II) above, a level of complexity results that is difficult to administer and maintain without a large number of errors. For example, some legislative sections and schedules are amended several times annually.
Table 1 provides an example where Section 6 of the Income Tax Assessment Act has been amended 70 times:
TABLE 1S. 6am. No. 88, 1936; No. 30, 1939; No. 50, 1942;No. 3, 1944; No. 6, 1946; No. 44, 1948; No. 48,1950; No. 1, 1953; No. 65, 1957; No. 55, 1958;No. 85, 1959; Nos. 18 and 108, 1960; No. 17, 1961;No. 69, 1963; No. 110, 1964; No. 103, 1965;No. 85, 1967; Nos. 4, 60 and 87, 1968; No. 93, 1969;No. 54, 1971; Nos. 51 and 164, 1973; No. 216, 1973(as am. by No. 20, 1974); No. 126, 1974; Nos. 80 and117, 1975; Nos. 50, 143 and 205, 1976; Nos. 87 and172, 1978; No. 27, 1979; No. 24, 1980; Nos. 108 and 154,1981; No. 103, 1983; Nos. 47 and 123, 1984; No. 168, 1985;Nos. 41, 48, 52 and 154, 1986; No. 138, 1987; Nos. 73, 97,105 and 107, 1989; Nos. 20, 35 and 135, 1990; Nos. 4, 5,100 and 216, 1991; Nos. 80, 98 and 224, 1992; Nos. 17, 18,57 and 82, 1993; Nos. 138 and 181, 1994; Nos. 5 and 169,1995
It is both difficult and impractical to store the complete amendment history of every word and phrase within section 6. Trying to track all changes on such a detailed level leads to unmanageable complexity.
Largely, the split between historical and present information has come about because of the publishing and information industry's own development, and not because such is the desired or best way to manage information. Thus, a need clearly exists for an electronic publishing system that can overcome one or more of the disadvantages of conventional techniques and systems.
International Publication No. WO 98/34179 (PCT/AU98/00050), corresponding to U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/108,999, is incorporated herein by cross reference and discloses an electronic publishing system that provides a sparse multidimensional matrix of data using a set of flat file records. In particular, the computer-implemented system publishes an electronic publication using text-based data. Predefined portions of the text-based data are stored and used for the publication. At least one of the predefined portions is modified, and the modified version is stored as well. The predefined portion is typically a block of text, greater in size than a single word, but less than an entire document. Thus, for example, in the case of legislation, the predefined portion may be a section of the Act. Each predefined portion and the modified portion(s) are marked up with one or more links using a markup language, preferably SGML or XML. The system also has attributes, each being a point on an axis of a multidimensional space for organising the predefined portions and the modified portion(s) of the text-based data. This system is simply referred to as the Multi Access Layer Technology or “MALT” system hereinafter.
Existing methods of navigating electronic publications have been derived from traditional methods used to navigate printed publications. Typical of these methods is the use of a bookmark, which is merely an indicator which identifies a page or section of interest. Bookmarks are typically limited in the information provided to users. Bookmarks follow a single axis, perhaps indicating the current page, chapter and title of the publication. However, bookmarks do not necessarily provide the user with adequate context pertaining to how the user arrived at the current page. If a user knows the exact publication desired and then navigates through the same publication, a bookmark is probably adequate for the user's needs. In the event that the user has conducted a number of searches and trawled through various versions of different documents to arrive at the current page of a publication, it is impossible for a bookmark to capture all the relevant information and provide the user with an adequate reading context. The book metaphor fails to address the abilities and complexities of electronic publications.
Existing methods of navigating compact disc based publications and Internet sites are typically ill-suited to displaying the complex data provided by MALT. Known web solutions, for example, typically handle two axes, sequential and hierarchical, using either embedded links such as Previous, Next and Contents, or expandable content frames, as provided in Windows Explorer. Further axes may be handled by incorporating embedded links in the body of the text. Such embedded links are point to point, and provide limited navigational value to the user.
Object databases are capable of providing the required functionality, but search queries employed by these databases are too complicated for untrained users, both in terms of the complexity and amount of information required.
Thus, a need clearly exists for a detailed context to be provided to users of electronic publishing, overcoming one or more disadvantages of existing systems.